MovieChat Forums > A Star Is Born (1954) Discussion > didn't anybody care how judy LOOKED in ...

didn't anybody care how judy LOOKED in this movie?

posted 19 years ago by robertinlosangeles
185 replies | jump to latest

I can think of perhaps three scenes, one of them at the Academy Awards, where she looks halfway decent. Never does she look anything near a movie star. She looks plain, unattractive, old, and sometimes downright ugly. Sure, she wasn't classically beautiful, but if you contrast her appearance in this film with how she looks in her later MGM pics beginning with Meet Me In St. Louis, and then, only at the Christmas scene, but through some of her scenes in Easter Parade, In The Good Old Summertime,The Pirate-- it's like MGM knew how to make her look okay, but Warner Bros., where Star was filmed, didn't have a clue. Just my opine, but is there anybody who thinks she looks GOOD in Star?

[–] cookiela2001 12 years ago

Sorry I can't read through all the pages of comments right now...but as I imagine others have posted, this movie went through several costume designers and they all kept experimenting with how to make Garland look better.

I don't think the earth tones that were picked for some of her clothes are very flattering. She looks really good in the blue dress for The Man That Got Away," though. The fitted tuxedo jacket and split skirt in the opening number look nice, too. I also like the mauve gown and bolero she wears singing Melancholy Baby.

My mom saw a revival of this when I was little and said, "Her clothes were AWFUL!"

[–] DivingIntheBlue 12 years ago

The fitted tuxedo jacket and split skirt in the opening number look nice, too.

I agree. Judy has moments in all her films where she looks amazing in one scene and then like reheated poo in the next. I think the only time she looked amazing throughout a film was in The Clock (which bored me to tears but man, did Judy look great) and Ziegfeld Girl. I'm sure there are others that die hard Judy fans could school me on, but I'm not a big Garland fan so I haven't seen every last one of her films.

I gotta say though, I was shocked when I read Garland was in her early 30s in this film. She looked better ten years later which I think had a lot to do with the makeup and the hairstyles of that era. Very few people could pull off that short hair and gobs of makeup. The ladies ended up looking old or very scary (think Joan Crawford in just about any film she did in the 1950s).

[–] Hollywoodwhore99 12 years ago

If you look at the BLU-Ray Judy looks GREAT

[–] nicequeencersei 12 years ago

I think she looks wonderful. Aren't we supposed to see the ordinary person behind the star in this? She's not supposed to look perfect all the time. This film was never about her appearance in the first place. Its a quality drama with great songs.

[–] Felixthecat34213 12 years ago

No, I was too focused on her amazing performance. She really embodied the character, didn't anyone notice how amazing her performance was?

[–] smdpi-mail-com 11 years ago

Dear oh dear. You really stirred the pot, didn't you? Never mind. A healthy debate is good. I just watched this, and thought the fault befell the hair and make up department, rather than Judy herself. It would have been more appropriate to give her a softer look, with a lighter brown hair, and her make up, not so pale. We all need the right colours to make us look our best.

[–] vinidici 11 years ago

In a thread a big as this one, I cannot possibly be the only guy who noticed what a lovely pair of legs Miss Garland was sporting in many scenes! Will read through all seven pages of this some other time, but not right now -- gotta go to work.

Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!

[–] shandy8 11 years ago

I know this is an old thread, but I just want to add my two cents. Esther's look was at best inconsistent. In some scenes she looked bloated and unattractive and in others she looked cute (when she sings 'Melancholy Baby, she's radiant, but in her signature number ('The Man that Got Away') she looks like she's stuffed into that blue suit. She looks great in the scene when she acts out the production number for Norman.

"What do you want me to do, draw a picture? Spell it out!"

[–] emuir-1 10 years ago

The big problem was the horrible harsh mid 50's make up and hair styling. Rather than a soft cloud of hair framing her face and adding a bit of height on the top, Judy's hair was dragged back into a tight pleat at the back with a short fringe at the front, and slicked down with grease making her look like a washerwoman. In one scene with James Mason it was hard to tall who had the most grease on their hair.

The harsh make up, black eyeliner under the eyes and those ghastly scarlet lips did not help. But worst of all was the lighting, which made me wonder if she'd fallen out with the lighting cameraman. Her face should have been softly lit from all angles to disguise the bags under her eyes, the lines beside her mouth and her sagging chin, ESPECIALLY during the chiaroscuro lit scenes where half her face was in deep shadow accentuating the flaws. That kind of lighting is usually reserved for horror films! Better hairstyling, softer focus and softer lighting would have made a big difference.

[–] Doghouse-6 10 years ago

Both director Cukor and DP Sam Leavitt were also working with CinemaScope for the first time and, as with early talkies, new methods often seemed to induce in film makers a temporary form of amnesia where their acquired knowledge up to that point was concerned, or at the very least, to allow themselves to be thrown by the new technology.

This phenomenon extended beyond lighting to composition as well. In Judy's emotional dressing room scene, she's at the extreme right of the frame while Bickford, at the even more extreme left, has portions of the back or top of his head cropped out of the shot at times. Likewise, when Norman talks Esther into quitting the band in the courtyard of her apartment, their two-shot near the end of the scene occupies the left half of the frame while the right half is completely unoccupied for no apparent reason. Something similar occurs in the Mocambo terrace scene. All of which is odd when considering other moments - Vicki's Oscar speech, for example - when very creative use of the new aspect ratio is made. But at other times, they just didn't seem to know what to do with it.

Going back to the lighting, something I've observed in the first couple or so years of 'scope appears to me to be a tendency to put more emphasis on lighting the sets than the actors.

Poe! You are...avenged!